TransChristians.org

True Sex

Gender defenders, when mentioning
intersex, bring a concept of "true sex." This is never explained
precisely, but understood to mean intersex people are, in their "true"
existence, really purely female or purely male. Said another way, God
intends for a person to be, for example, female but her intersex
condition creates an illusion of maleness combined with femaleness; if
we dig down, her femaleness is revealed as primary and her maleness as
secondary. The "true sex" concept is required for the gender binary
because intersex people, like everyone else, need to be sorted into one
gender/sex or the other.

There are three problems with
the true sex concept: 1. It is self-contradiction, 2. hypocritical, 3.
unknowable, and 4. a shoddy theology of Creation.

"True sex" is self-contradiction
because it takes the word "sex," maintains the connotation, philosophy,
and theology but changes the definition to something completely
different. "Sex," by definition describes the physical. This is not my
definition but the unanimous definition. An intersex person with one
ovary and one testis (mixed gonadal dysgenesis) is quite simply male and female.Or partly male and partly female if you prefer. Sex is body. But "true sex" means to say that our bodies don't really tell us our sex. Those differing gonads are really only male or only female. The only logical conclusion is that either the testis is female or the ovary is male!Mixed
gonadal dysgenesis is a nice, neat example. There are many others:
female beards, male breast tissue, male vaginas, female penis, and male
clitoris.
Absurd. When gender defenders talk about true sex, they refer to an
idea about human existence that transcends and sometimes contradicts
our bodies. Do we have a word for that? Oh yes, "gender!" They really
mean "true gender." A man can have an ovary and a woman a testis. And
if a man can have an ovary, there is no reason a man can't have a two
ovaries (that is, a transman). Of course that word would reveal that
gender defenders, when put in a corner, really believe gender is more
important than sex.That brings up the second problem.

"True sex" or "true gender" makes gender defenders hypocrites in
regards to Nature. Remember that transgenderism believes Nature,
manifest through our bodies, is not the highest or sole authority;
rather something which transcends our bodies is also important.
Christians (as opposed to Gnostics) will put the two on a more or less
equal level. Gender defenders, however, told us Nature is inerrant and
our feelings need to conform to Nature. "You must feel good and
patriotic about your genitals." Now that we come to intersex, they
change their position! Now, like good Christians, they say Nature is
only part of the story. Nature is not perfect; Nature makes mistakesI think that is rather poor theology, but a more accurate statement is too complicated and off-topic. You understand my meaning. ; Christians may and often should work against Nature.

The most damning remark against "true sex" is that, even if it did
exist, it would be worthless because true sex is unknowable. True sex
is only valued because, in theory, it answers, "Is it a boy or a girl?"
If an intersex person had a true sex but no one could know it, why
would it matter? The purpose of having a true sex is to live
accordingly but that requires knowing your true sex.

It is
impossible to know true sex because it does not exist; proving a fact
about a make-believe object is tricky. It is altogether impossible
because true sex / true gender is philosophy (gender) masquerading as
biology (sex). The gender defenders give us nothing to go on except
recommending karyotypes. Why? The thinking, I suppose, is that, like
Creation and the Garden of Eden, our bodies began perfectly and then
degenerated. Understanding our origin will reveal true sex and genes
are set at conception. As if God was involved completely during
conception and not a moment
later? Christian do not believe this about Creation, so why would we
believe it about our individual creations? The reason gender defenders
love genes so much is they think (and lie) that all sex becomes black
and white at that point. But Klinefelters, Turner and mosaicism expose
that as false simplicity. Lacking any other reason, picking genes
versus hormones, genitals, breast size, hair patterns, etc is
completely arbitrary. Those things reveal how much someone is female or male, but not whether
they are truly one or the other. You could, hypothetically, create an
scale (also arbitrary) combining every sex characteristic to measure a
person's sex. But scoring a person as 73% male and 27% female does not
make them truly female. Every attempt at finding true sex only
emphasizes we are hunting a product of our imagination. Further, I have
yet to hear of an intersex person who found their true sex.

My
final complaint against true sex is what it means for our theology.
Besides the atrocity that Christians should obey our bodies without
question, "true sex" infers that God's plan is a secret we need to go
discover. A couple of proteins in our cells contain the answer to who
we should marry, whether we seek ordination, whether to change our
name, and all the ways gender impacts our place in the world. Thousands
of pages of Scripture and millenia of Christian tradition aren't
enough, we need to embark on a mystical quest all alone? That is just
like Gnosticism, not orthodox Christianity.
Worse still, it smacks of legalism. Rather than consider "is this
loving" as Jesus taught and "is this helpful, healthy, fruitful" as
Paul taught, depending on true sex degrades us to the Pharisees.
"Should I wear pink or blue? Let me consult my karyotype kosher test
results."

If you need further proof, consider the utter absence of intersex
people who have discovered their true sex and their lifestyle questions
answered. Even Jerry Leach's intersex example shows someone living as
both genders; if they knew or cared about their true sex they would
live as one or the other. The EV Alliance believes AIS women and some
other intersex people should not
live according to their genetic sex.p21 Report